Chapter 4 - The Secret of the Black Forge
The cold stone of the subterranean vault seemed to press in from all sides, heavy with the weight of centuries. Elden stood firm, the tip of his greatsword resting lightly against the dust-covered floor. The blue veins pulsing within the dark metal cast an ethereal glow across Lord Vane’s calculated, watchful face.
"I didn't find it," Elden said, his voice steady despite the fatigue pulling at his bones. "I made it."
Vane chuckled, a dry, humorless sound that echoed off the damp arches. He paced slowly around the boy, his crimson robes whispering against the stone. "A child from the slums, working with scraps and slag-heap sweepings, creates a blade that shatters legendary iron with a single stroke? Do not insult my intelligence, boy. That metal hasn't been smelted in the upper realms since the Fall of the Seven Spires."
"Believe what you want," Elden replied, refusing to flinch under the nobleman’s piercing gaze. "My father left me a chest before the lung-rot took him. It wasn't gold. It was a block of heavy, pitch-black stone that wouldn't melt in a standard coal fire. It took me three years of blowing the bellows until my ribs cracked just to soften the outer crust enough to hammer out a core."
Vane stopped pacing. His obsidian eyes narrowed sharply. "A star-fall chunk. Recovered from the deep excavation sites beneath the outer wall." He reached out a gloved hand toward the sword, his fingers trembling with a covetous hunger. "Give it to me. Name your price. Land in the upper tier, a lifetime stipend of gold, a seat in the master guild—it is all yours in exchange for the blade."
Elden pulled the sword back an inch, the blue light flaring angrily in warning. "It's not for sale."
Vane’s smile vanished instantly, replaced by a mask of cold, aristocratic fury. "You misunderstand your position, little smith. You are standing in a royal vault, five hundred feet beneath a city that answers to my command. You do not possess the right of refusal."
Before Vane could signal the guards waiting in the shadows of the stairway, a sudden, violent tremor shook the foundation of the vault. Dust rained down from the ceiling, and the ancient runes carved into the central stone altar began to glow with a sickly green light.
CRACK!
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A deep, subterranean roar echoed through the earth, sounding like the groan of awakening stone. The torch flames flickered violently and died, plunging the chamber into darkness—save for the brilliant, pulsing blue radiance of Elden’s sword, which now illuminated a massive fissure splitting directly across the floor between them.
From the depths of the fissure, a plume of suffocating, sulfurous smoke billowed upward, carrying with it a sound that made Elden’s blood run cold: the rhythmic, heavy scraping of massive claws against rock.
